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The Darling Craytur

Every day 1,000,000 pints of Guinness are sold in the United Kingdom alone. It is one of the tippler’s healthiest drinks as it contains malted barley, hops, yeast, and water. It is black because the barley is roasted like coffee beans.

Guinness was first made in 1759, the year Ferdinand VI of Spain died. Ten years before the birth of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is still the only drink in the world where the bubbles go downwards and every drop of the lovely stuff is brewed in Ireland using water from the Wicklow Mountains.

Good news for weight-watchers is that a pint of Guinness has only 210 calories. That’s 50 less than a pint of semi-skimmed milk. In England, post-op patients used to be given Guinness, as were blood donors, to build their recuperative strength. Sadly, this is no longer the case in England. However, Ireland has not cast off its civilised habits and Guinness is still made available to blood donors and stomach and intestinal post-op patients. Guinness is known to be high in iron content.

For people who like to fix things that are not broken, you can mix Guinness with ordinary beer and create a Black&Tan or even mix Guinness with champagne and create a Black Velvet. Personally, I think that anyone who does this needs their head examined, but it’s a big world and there’s space for us all.

Guinness has less alcohol than just about all other beers with only 3.4%. That is nature’s way to tell us to drink more of it. You should never only have one pint of Guinness; a bird cannot fly on one wing!

Flann O’Brien, author of the brilliant novel The Third Policeman, composed a eulogy to Guinness. He calls Guinness “a pint of plain.”

When things go wrong and will not come right,

though you do the best you can,

when life looks black as the hour of night

A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

When health is bad and your heart feels strange,

and your face is pale and wan,

when doctors say you need a change,

A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

In Spain, where people supposedly appreciate the finer aspects of good food and drink, it surprises me that so many people drink silly drinks like Coronita beer and Cuba Libres (what a terrible thing to do to a whiskey!). But then I shouldn’t expect the Spanish to be like the Irish.

The Irish, having the gift of the gab, are garrulous, gleeful, and gorgeous. We have great golfers, glorious girls, and a generous gallantry. And, best of all, we have Guinness – Vitamin G. God’s great gift.

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It Makes me Wonder

I saw Led Zeppelin in concert when I was 18 years old and it is still the best concert I have ever seen. Since then I have seen Prince, Fleetwood Mac, Mike Oldfield, Yes, Van Morrison, Queen,  Iggy Pop, Joan Armatrading, Bob Dylan and God knows how many lesser mortals. But those 3 hours in Knebworth in 1979 shine like a beacon across the years.

There were 200,000 of us in a very large field. At one end of there was an enormous stage and towers of amplifiers. This was the Knebworth Festival. Also playing that day were The New Barbarians (The Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger), Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, Southside Johnny and The Astbury Jukes, The New Commander Cody Band and a dreadful duo called Chas and Dave.  The other bands were okay (apart from Chas and Dave) but everyone, without exception, had come to hear Led Zeppelin – the band who played “Stairway to Heaven”.

As dusk fell and the smell of woodsmoke mingled with the scent of hashish, the electricfying  introduction to “The Song Remains The Same” flew from the massed banks of amplifiers. The gods had descended to earth.  Rock festival veterans had brought binoculars. I hadn’t realised that the band would be so far away. However, at the back of the stage was a giant screenwhich displayed closed-circuit TV pictures of the group.

One highlight was Jimmy Page playing his guitar with a violin bow out of which fired a red laser beam into the summer sky.

Led Zeppelin released nine albums between 1969 and 1979 and were one of the most popular rock bands ever. In 1975 six of their albums were in the charts at the same time.

Although from England, Led Zeppelin’s members loved the blues and American rock. Their USA shows were always sold -out and they only stopped when their drummer, John Bonham died. There is no adult guitarist in the English speaking world who cannot play the opening chords of “Stairway to Heaven” . It is the definitive ‘rock anthem’.

At Knebworth someone set fire to a flag and held it above their head. It burned like a torch. One of the closed circuit TV cameras turned and focussed on this image. The smell of the burning wood took all 200,000 of us back to the Middle Ages. Then Jimmy Page started to play those famous chords and the voice of Robert Plant began to sing the lyrics we all knew by heart.

“There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west

And my spirit is crying for leaving.

In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees

And the voices of those who stand looking.”

And we did stand looking. For 8 minutes on the 11 August 1979 Led Zeppelin had 200,004 members. All singing by heart and from the heart. None of us could tell you what the words meant. But none of us would tell you they were meaningless.  They spoke to a yearning, to a feeling some of us still get.

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On Saturday I attended the first meeting of the Irish in Spain. Well, I suppose there must have been thousands or millions of meetings of  Irish in Spain over the years but not a big, official one of the Irish in Spain where we have a look at ourselves and see what we’re all about.

I was lucky enough to get invited to read some poems such as the deeply beautiful Lake Isle of Innisfree by WB Yeats.This is one of my favourite poems of all time as opposed to just one of my favorite poems. The latter chop and change according to internal weather systems but the all-timers are as fixed as the North Star. Have a read and see how you can see twinkly stars in the second stanza and hear the lake in the third .

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now,
And go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there,
Of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there,
A hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there,
For peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning
To where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer,
And noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now,
For always night and day
I hear lake water lapping
With low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway
Or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

A million years ago in Manchester I used to perform poetry with the Live Poets Society (motto: Poetry So Good You Can Actually Understand It) and it was with that happy band of poets that I learned the difference between poetry on the page and poetry on the stage. You need to lift the language from the paper and get it flying around the room. Poetry isn’t literature! It is sound. It is physical.

This Yeats poem is perfect for reading aloud. It is joyous and reverent and decided.

Anyhow, the Irish in Spain event was great. I hope the Madrid Irish can get some regular meetings going and that we have a national event at least annually. Good craic so it was.

Read about it here innisfree1916.

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My Sligo Grandparents - The Cawleys

What’s in a name? I suppose that depends where you come from. In Spain women don’t change their names when they get married. Where I come from they do. And we never incorporate our mothers’ maiden names into our surnames. Unless you are very posh like Helena Bonham-Carter.

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